Meal Planning

I finally did it. I have begun planning my meals after going through the daily battle of asking my husband what he wants and him dying of starvation while I figure something out.

So far there have been some days where I have gone out for dinner or decided to make a dish for him that he wanted that was different from what I had planned. That's the beauty of it--it's not rigid. You can swap days or skip days depending on whats going on. I like that because sometimes I fly by the seat of my pants or something comes up and I need flexibility.

Having meals planned has also helped my grocery shopping IMMENSELY because I find I am spending less and my shopping is more focused. I didn't realize how much meal planning would help but I hope I can stick with it.

I found a grocery list template on google search from PracticalSpreadsheets.com. They have two available. One has the "staples" on it and one is blank. It looks like this:

 

When I downloaded it and opened it in Excel, I changed the color green to a light grey so I wouldn't waste color ink. I also may have changed a section name or two to make it fit my needs better but over all I am LOVIN' IT!!!

They also have a WEEKLY MEAL PLANNER spreadsheet that I think I'll use too that looks like this:



With this template I am also changing the color to white and grey and am changing the sections to: Lunch, Snack, Dinner, and Notes. Breakfast is always either pancakes or cereal. If I do something new for breakfast it would be so infrequent that I wouldn't plan for it.

I hope that these tools will help you get organized. I couple minutes of planning will save hours wasted.